Calculating All that Jazz: Accurately Predicting Digital Storage Needs Utilizing Digitization Parameters for Analog Audio and Still Image Files

Abstract

Library professionals and library assistants who lack computer science or audiovisual training are often tasked with writing digital project proposals, grant applications or rationale to fund digitization projects for their institutions. Much has been written about digitization projects over the last two decades; digital storage has been highlighted as a central feature of any digitization project, especially the need to purchase additional storage mechanisms to house digitized collections. What is missing from the library science literature is a method for reliably calculating digital storage needs on the basis of parameters for digitizing analog materials such as documents, photographs, and sound recordings in older formats.